Twitter users slam ‘joke trial’ verdict

Twitter users, including celebrities, are using a #twitterjoketrial hashtag to voice their anger at Paul Chambers losing his appeal against the charge of writing a message of a ‘
menacing nature’, after he threatened to blow an airport ‘sky high’.

Paul Chambers tweeted that he’d blow an airport ‘sky high’

The former trainee accountant, 27, made the threat on his Twitter page in January this year after Robin Hood Airport, near Doncaster, was closed due to bad weather.

He tweeted: ‘Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your s**t together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!’

Mr Chambers had argued that this tweet was merely a ‘foolish prank’.

Judge Jacqueline Davies, however, said the message, sent to a romantic interest who Mr Chambers now lives with in Northern Ireland, was ‘menacing in its content’ and threw out the appeal.

Mr Chambers was fined £1000 for the tweet.

The verdict has caused a huge Twitterstorm. Here are some of the messages about the case being tweeted today:

Comedian Dara O’Briain: ‘It is a measure of how stupid this ruling is that we’re all reduced to making petty joke threats to point that out. #twitterjoketrial. So that’s the banning of sarcasm, irony, sub-text and any of the other subtleties of language that we use AS GROWN-UPS.’

Comedian David Mitchell: ‘A disgrace. He’s being punished for flippancy’

MattB_UK: ‘Thousands of people are behind you. You should fight this as much as you can.’

SteelRainMkV: ‘On the very day we remember millions who died for freedom… #twitterjoketrial.’